Disappeared from Google? Triage your site
Enter the domain. The triage runs the nine checks that can take a whole site out of Google, in the order Google meets them: whether it can reach the site, whether the homepage asks not to be indexed, and whether the sitemap still serves. Each check comes back ruled out, suspect or confirmed, with the status line, header or robots.txt rule that decided it, so you fix the one thing that is actually wrong instead of guessing.
Six fetches: the homepage as Googlebot and as a browser, robots.txt, the sitemap, one TLS handshake and one registry lookup, spaced two seconds apart. Expect about ten seconds.
Illustrative result for a reserved example domain. Your triage replaces it.
Found it: noindex on the homepage
Each confirmed check below is enough on its own to keep the site out of Google. Fix those first, in the order listed.
- Domain
- example.com
- Homepage resolved to
- https://www.example.com/
- Tally
- 1 confirmed · 1 suspect · 7 ruled out
- Checked
- Thu, 22 Oct 2026 09:00:00 GMT
Crawling: can Googlebot reach the site?
Google crawls first. If the domain, the certificate, robots.txt or the server stops Googlebot here, nothing after this point matters.
- ruled outDomain registration
Registered for another 212 days.
- RDAP expiry: 2027-05-22
- ruled outTLS certificate
Valid for www.example.com, 61 days left.
- Host: www.example.com
- Valid until: 2026-12-22
- ruled outrobots.txt answers
robots.txt answers 200.
- GET https://www.example.com/robots.txt
- Status: 200
- ruled outrobots.txt rule for the homepage
Googlebot is allowed to crawl /.
- Path evaluated: /
- Googlebot: allowed
- User-agent *: allowed
- suspectHomepage as Googlebot vs a browser
Googlebot's user agent gets 403 while a browser gets 200. Check the Crawl stats report in Search Console for the same errors from real Googlebot.
- Googlebot user agent: 403 at https://www.example.com/
- Browser user agent: 200 at https://www.example.com/
Next: Crawler versus browser · Search Console: Blocked due to access forbidden (403) · Search Console: Server error (5xx)
- ruled outRedirects from the homepage
1 redirect(s), staying on example.com.
- 301 https://example.com/
- 200 https://www.example.com/
Indexing: does the homepage ask to be left out?
A page Google can fetch can still tell it not to index, or name another URL as the one to index instead.
- confirmednoindex on the homepage
The homepage tells Google not to index it (x-robots-tag (*): noindex). Google drops a page from results once it recrawls and sees this.
- meta robots: none
- meta googlebot: none
- X-Robots-Tag: noindex
Next: X-Robots-Tag checker · Search Console: Excluded by 'noindex' tag
- ruled outCanonical on the homepage
The canonical points at the homepage itself.
- Final URL: https://www.example.com/
- rel=canonical: https://www.example.com/
Discovery: can Google find the rest?
A sitemap helps Google find URLs. A broken one is worth fixing, but on its own it does not remove indexed pages.
- ruled outSitemap
Served and parseable, 48 entries.
- URL: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
- Source: declared in robots.txt
- Status: 200
- Entries: 48
This is one reading, taken now. The causes on this list usually arrive with a deploy: a staging robots.txt shipped to production, a CDN rule that started refusing Googlebot, a noindex left in a template. stillindexed re-checks them on a scheduleand alerts when one changes, so the next one is found before the traffic graph shows it. The longer walk-through is website disappeared from Google: six checks.
Want this checked every 30 minutes?
14-day free trial, 3 sites, no card required. We re-check the URLs you choose, confirm a critical change with a second fetch, then alert Telegram and email.
What this check means
- Ruled out
- The reading was taken and this cause is not present. It is a statement about now; it does not say what the site looked like when traffic dropped.
- Suspect
- Something is wrong, but on its own it may not explain a disappearance, or the evidence comes from our network rather than Google’s. Follow it up in Search Console.
- Confirmed
- The fault is present now and is enough on its own to keep the site out of Google: an expired domain, Googlebot disallowed from the homepage, a noindex, a canonical naming another host.
- Could not check
- The reading could not be taken: the registry publishes no RDAP data, robots.txt did not answer, the homepage returned no page. Never reported as ruled out.
How to read the result
- Crawling
- Domain registration, the TLS certificate, robots.txt status and its rule for the homepage, the homepage status as Googlebot and as a browser, and where the homepage redirects.
- Indexing
- noindex in a meta robots tag, a meta googlebot tag or the X-Robots-Tag header, including directives scoped to googlebot, and the rel="canonical" on the homepage.
- Discovery
- The sitemap robots.txt declares, or /sitemap.xml: whether it answers 200, parses as XML and lists URLs.
- Evidence
- The lines that decided the verdict: status codes and final URLs per user agent, the redirect hops, the exact directive and where it came from, the robots.txt verdict for Googlebot and the * group.
- Permalink
- After a result, the address bar carries the domain after a #. Opening that link reruns the triage live, so a shared link never shows a stale answer.
Common causes
- A staging robots.txt with Disallow: / deployed to production.
- A noindex left on from a staging environment, a CMS visibility setting or an SEO plugin.
- A WAF or bot-management rule refusing Googlebot while browsers load the site normally.
- A canonical tag pointing at a staging host, an old domain or the HTTP version.
- An expired domain registration or TLS certificate.
- A redirect to another domain left over from a migration or added by a compromised site.
In what order should I check why my site disappeared from Google?
In the order Google meets your site. Google describes Search as three stages: crawling, indexing and serving. A site that cannot be crawled never reaches indexing, so this triage checks what stops crawling first (domain registration, TLS, robots.txt, the server’s answer to Googlebot, redirects), then what stops indexing (noindex, a canonical pointing elsewhere), then discovery (the sitemap). The first confirmed check is usually the one to fix.
My robots.txt returns a 404. Is that why I disappeared?
No. Google treats every 4xx answer for robots.txt, except 429, as if no robots.txt existed, which means no crawl restrictions at all. A 5xx or 429 is different: for the first 12 hours Google stops crawling the site, then it uses the last good copy for up to 30 days. The triage marks a 404 as ruled out and a 5xx as suspect for that reason.
I removed the noindex but the site has not come back. Why?
Google has to recrawl the page to see that the noindex is gone, and it can only see the page if robots.txt allows it. Google’s documentation is explicit that a noindex behind a robots.txt block is never seen at all. Fix both, then use URL Inspection in Search Console to request a recrawl of the homepage.
Why is a 403 for Googlebot only "suspect" and not "confirmed"?
Because our request carries Googlebot’s user agent but comes from our IP, not Google’s. A firewall that verifies Google by IP may treat real Googlebot differently. A 403 to our Googlebot request while a browser gets 200 is strong evidence of a bot rule, and the Crawl stats report in Search Console shows whether real Googlebot is getting the same errors.
Does a canonical pointing to another domain really remove my homepage?
It can. Google calls a rel="canonical" link a strong signal that the named URL should be indexed instead, and a redirect an even stronger one. A homepage that names a staging host or an old domain as canonical is asking Google to index that other address. The triage marks a canonical to a different host as confirmed, and one that differs only by www as ruled out.
Everything is ruled out. What else can cause a drop?
Google’s guide to traffic drops lists the rest: algorithmic updates, security issues, spam issues and manual actions, seasonality, and site moves. Those live in Search Console (the Manual Actions and Security Issues reports, and the Performance report over 16 months), not in anything a public check can fetch. If every check here is ruled out, that is where to look next.
Does a missing sitemap make a site disappear?
No. A sitemap helps Google discover URLs, and Google treats sitemap inclusion as a weak canonical signal. Not having one does not remove indexed pages. A sitemap that robots.txt declares but that no longer serves, or that serves broken XML, is still worth fixing, so the triage marks those as suspect.